You know, this place has really great reviews. Even in the "not recommended" section there are mostly good reviews.
Mmmm my review. I'm kinda on the fence about this. See, the shop is nice! It's a location that was pretty easy to find, plenty of parking, decent waiting area and most importantly, clean.
This shop has something a lot of other shops don't have: a receptionist. I find this professional and organized of their facility. They clearly are working with a high volume of customers. That's a good thing! Their website is also informative and helpful.
Well the guy I wanted to book was Dan, specifically for a watercolor design my best friend designed for both of us. The most unfortunate part of this is that Dan wasn't available for us. Again, sucks for us but good for him. He pointed us in the direction of Erik.
Mind you, my friend is not from here so we needed to coordinator this to a specific day. So I was very understanding of the limited availability. So, Erik; I saw some of his work prior to my visit, so I was like okay, he should be able to handle this. I gave him my deposit and we were booked.
Cut to the actual day. We had slight changes that needed to be made. Erik was very nice and professional and he took the changes with stride. My mistake was explaining to him how we expected the watercolor to look instead of SHOWING him. Because he acted as if he understood, but then when we got the watercolor done, it was NOT how we wanted it to look. I take partial fault in this, HOWEVER it was very obvious that he was just not skilled in watercolor. If he wasn't comfortable doing watercolor or let us know it wasn't really his thing, we would have just kept the tattoo as it was.
Now I have a lot of tattoos. All of them except one are watercolor. All of them different styles. So I know exactly how watercolor should look...and this ain't it!
To top it off, he took very long setting up. So we were there a long time. That actually is worth mentioning for people who have time restraints, but was mostly a nonissue. My biggest issue was the fact that he charged us both $120 for a tattoo that a) wasn't done properly, b) did not take an hour to complete. In fact, my friends only took 30 minutes. Mine probably about 45. She didn't tip much though. And c) only noticeable after I started healing is a random purple tattoo line that isn't a part of anything in the tattoo itself!!! How? Why?! Obviously he accidentally marked me. Ugh.
Trust me, I understand what it takes to tattoo. I have paid really good money for all of my tatts and I have tipped well over 20%. This tattoo was not worth $150, which is what I gave (Because I'm a decent human being and I don't hate the guy or my tatt). The watercolor mistake, thank GOD, is actually an easy fix my go-to artist can do. But now I'm going to have to pay more to do that. So. That's frustrating.
If you've learned anything from my review, let it be this. If you have a specific idea of how you want your tattoo to look, be clear and be 100% your artist has the skills your looking for. Not all artist are created equal, which is what makes every one so unique.
I'm not knocking Erik or this place. Stars are based on my experience, but I think that this place has quality artists and you definitely should look into who can give you what you're looking for! read more